HYMENOPTERA REPORT 2015–16
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HYMENOPTERA RECORDER’S REPORT 2015-16 ADRIAN KNOWLES It often seems to be that unplanned, chance opportunities yield interesting finds, and so it proved to be on 18 June 2015. I had been at work, collecting invertebrate samples from grazing marsh at Shotley. Having finished slightly earlier than I was expecting, I decided to take the opportunity to do a bit of recording at Shotley Gate. The focus of my activity was a strip of oak woodland on a steep cliff overlooking Erwarton Bay on the south-western side of the village. Being pressed for time, and knowing that most specimens would have to be looked at microscopically anyway, I admit that I did not give too much attention to what I was catching at the time. Upon examining the catch at home that evening, it became apparent that I had taken two females of the mining bee Andrena florea – at the time, the first confirmed record for Suffolk. It is a remarkable discovery given that its known distribution before then extended no further north than south Essex. A more detailed discussion of the find can be found in Knowles (2015). In May 2016, I then received an email from Colin Lucas advising me that he, too, had taken a specimen of Andrena florea in June 2015, from Captains Wood, Sudbourne, but on the 16th – two days before my assumed county ‘first’! In early June 2016, David Basham then took specimens of this bee from three separate locations: Purdis Heath SSSI, the adjacent Purdis Farm, to the south-east of Ipswich and Holywells Park on the eastern side of Ipswich. It thus seems that the species has firmly established itself in the south-east of the county. I was invited to undertake further survey work at the Center Parcs holiday village at Elveden, within Thetford Forest in both 2015 and 2016. This site was very extensively worked by Steven Falk, under contract with Center Parcs between 1994 and 2004, to compile a list of the invertebrates at the site as the holiday village was constructed and then “matured”. It is likely that many of the species recorded by Falk no longer occur here, since large areas of previously bare ground have become overgrown with tall vegetation or overshadowed by growing conifers. However, new species are still being recorded here. During a previous visit, I had identified the small nine-hole golf course as an area worth closer inspection, but was not able to visit it at the time. On 19 August 2015, I had an opportunity to put this right. In order that the course is not too demanding for the holiday-makers, areas of rough are limited, although two larger areas of flowerrich tall grassland are conserved in the southern half of the course. Here, a small population of Small Scabious Scabiosa columbaria survives and I was pleased to find that this supports a population of the solitary mining bee Andrena marginata. Although described as a ‘polylectic’ species (i.e. one that can collect pollen from a relatively wide variety of different plant taxa), it is generally associated with various Scabiouses, at least in Britain. I was slightly surprised to discover, upon returning home, that this bee had not been recorded at Center Parcs during Falk’s eleven-year study. It occurs quite widely across Breckland in Suffolk and so was a species I was fully expecting to be found here. Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 52 (2016)